Requiem of a Phoenix
by GinHermi
Summary: "Her first death spawned a musical lament. Her second death brought silence." But what would happen after his? Irene mourns the Fall with a requiem before the truth meets her on a lonely night in France. First Sherlock fic. A sad little one shot for this ship. Rated T just to be safe.


**A/N**: This is my first foray into this fandom and to this unpopular ship (I'm possibly the tenth person in this ship), so please be kind. :) Just something I came up with after seeing _Scandal_ for the umpteenth time and thinking about what happened to Irene...especially after the Fall. This is a tiny bit experimental but I think it's pretty clear. Sorry if I left a grammatical error around, suckers are hard to get on my phone. ^_^

* * *

Her first death spawned a musical lament. Her second death brought silence. No one had mourned her second death.

She had been away for some time and began a new life thanks to _him_. However, she couldn't deny that every so often she toyed with the idea of getting on an airplane, taking a cab to his flat and sneaking into his bed as she had done in the past. Of course, given the circumstances, the idea was never more than a fantasy.

The day she heard the news had been a good day until... It was in the English newspaper she received. The article didn't start with something truly awful. It started by saying that he was a fake. She scoffed. There was no chance of that man being a fake...she knew it deep to her core. But her amused displeasure was instantly dropped when she read that he had committed suicide. At first there was shock:

"It makes no sense! He would never...he loves himself too much."

But further on, the article stated that John Watson had been a witness.

* * *

Denial.

He would appear, she was sure of it. He'd be dead for a week and re-appear.

John's blog disproved that theory.

* * *

She waited. His death spawned a musical lament...a requiem that, unbeknownst to its heartbroken female composer, easily served as a sister, indeed nearly a twin, to the composition that had been created with her in mind.

* * *

The instruments were different.

While he had shamelessly gone to work on his violin, she incessantly created on a piano. Strings were touched just the same. The chords played in the respective pieces were, in some ways, equally mournful.

For what seemed like hours, she wrote the composition as a means to distract her mind from the approaching _sentiments_, ones that threatened to unravel her from the inside out.

Part of her was still in denial, while the other part became angrily delusional.

She KNEW he was alive! How dare he! It was not very funny of him to fake his death! Where the hell _was_ he?! Her thoughts roamed around these lines.

But while storms brewed in her mind and agony ripped through her heart and chest, her face remained a mask. She continued on with her _vie nouvelle et clandestine dans France_. Nevertheless, every afternoon and every night she had available, she played her instrument. She played for he who had captivated her, who had unconventionally made her fall in love with him and who was unrivaled by any man or woman despite any word spoken to the contrary.

By the time she accepted his death, her heart tugged at the thought that she played the requiem for ears that would never hear it. She now played it less often and tried to carry on with her life, a mask always on her face.

* * *

Until...

She started seeing him everywhere. Seeing him in her dreams was not something uncommon for her, but shadows coming in from the windows were entirely anomalous. Then, somehow, she saw him when she went out on various occasions. She was going mad, she knew. Especially when, no matter what she saw on television, she pictured him sitting next to him with a disdainful look on his face correcting the errors on the program. Sometimes, much to her amusement, she even pictured him entering the programs to outright correct the narrator, the host or the characters.

* * *

It was just another night.

She was playing his lament again, eyes closed, her head tilted to the right and thinking about nothing but the occupation of her fingers.

* * *

This was how he saw her for the first time in over a year.

His eyes became happily inundated with her image. Her countenance seemed euphoric. Every muscle in her face was relaxed. Her long dark hair cascaded down her right side over a blue dressing gown that bore a striking resemblance to one that had belonged to him some time ago; one that she had worn on a very fateful day.

He walked over to her and gently placed a hand on her shoulder. Her senses were vigorously assaulted. She could sense his presence, feel his body heat behind her and smell his cologne. She took a deep breath.

"No."-she said firmly.

She stopped playing, got up, and turned around. He was actually before her. Rationally, she knew that hallucinations might create an entire picture and fool her senses into perceiving what was not there but even in her strangest and most detailed daydreams and hallucinations, she had never been able to recreate the way it felt when he innocuously placed his hands on innocent parts of her body.

There he was, in all his glory, a bit worse for wear but very much alive. His steely blue eyes did not the calculating gaze they normally did. While still holding some of that determined calculating nature, his eyes expressed exhaustion and (unless _her_ eyes were deceiving her) sentiment. She had to hold herself back from smirking. Somehow she managed it and kept her stoic mask on for him.

"No." She said again, this time with her usually playfully seductive tone of voice.

She brushed past time purposefully smacking his shoulder with her body as she walked into the bedroom.

He fumed and followed her.

"I need your help." He said as he stood in the doorway.

She looked at him from her place on the bed with a small smile, the kind she'd always had on her face before him in the past. "You heard my answer."

"Why not?!"-He said, raising his voice.

She got up and slapped him across the face. "You're your own higher power...fix it yourself."

He stood stoic as he spoke. "If I had any available alternative that would prevent me from coming here, don't you think I would've done so?"

She smiled wryly. "Dear me, afraid of showing sentiment?"

He eyes her with detention. "I'm not in the habit of endangering lives that I've gone out of my way to save."

She chuckled. "Even so, apologize right now. Deep down I knew you were alive but you've given me a fright-"

"And inspired sad music." He smirked.

"A girl's got to keep busy in times of stress." She said, waving it off with her hand.

This was a power play...they were stubborn and, but for her admitting her fear, neither would admit their true feelings. She would never reveal the torment she had lived and he would not, under any circumstance, tell her that though he truly needed her help, he came to her because he missed her and, more treacherous still, cared for her. They stood closely to one another staring at each other in a comforting silence. She was the one to break it.

"Give me one good reason why I should help you?"

He moved forward and all but closed the distance between them. His mouth neared her ear and in a familiar whisper, uttered: "I'm sorry."

The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end and before she realized, he was kissing her. He slid his arm around her waist and pulled her closer. For her, the kiss lasted ages, but it was no more than a minute or two. He broke the kiss a bit awkwardly and then looked at her serene face as she slowly opened her eyes. She then took on her trademark smirk.

"Alright." She said and pulled him to her again.

* * *

Time passed.

Her help had not gone unnoticed. She died a third and final time. Police ruled it an accident but when he heard the news some days after his resurrection, he automatically knew that it was not. _This _had been the final proof. Love and sentiment _were_ a dangerous disadvantage. How he felt inside was mind numbingly inexplicable and he tried his damnedest not to show it; he had been able to cope before and he would be able to cope now.

The morning after, he played his violin. Unlike before, where he made a composition all his own, this time he did his best to play the piece he had heard her play the last night he saw her. John said nothing to him at first but then, when he combined his music with hers, his companion noticed and gasped at the pain it caused.

Her first death spawned a musical death, his first death spawned a requiem. Now, there were no words to describe what the joining of these musical sisters created. No words would ever equal what the piece conveyed. Her final death had been the final death of his heart; it would never again be open. The lament was filled with longing, the requiem added anguish. Their creation spawned nothing but broken souls.


End file.
